The City's Top Gentrifying Neighborhoods

Greenpoint-Williamsburg, Harlem, the Lower East Side and Bushwick top the list of 15 neighborhoods that have gentrified in recent decades, according to a report released Monday by New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. 

In determining which areas gentrified, the Furman Center identified neighborhoods that were relatively low-income in the 1990s and which also experienced faster-than-typical rent increases over the past 20 years.

Here are key findings:

  • Rents in these 15 gentrifying neighborhoods grew an average of 34 percent, with most of that increase happening after 2000.
  • Rents in Greenpoint-Williamsburg grew even faster than that (79 percent). 
  • Gentrifying neighborhoods are becoming whiter and younger.
  • The residents are also increasingly likely to be college educated, living alone or with roommates (as opposed to with family members), and have higher incomes.
  • Housing stock in those neighborhoods has grown faster than other parts of the city, but gentrifying neighborhoods have yet to regain population lost back in the 1970s and 1980s.